


Remember

by town_without_heart



Category: Firefly
Genre: Canon Compliant (basically), Gen, POV Second Person, Spoilers for Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 18:09:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6668971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/town_without_heart/pseuds/town_without_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Simon Tam. You have two parents, both alive and lost to you. You gave them up to find your sister, River, the only person in the ‘verse who really matters. You used to be a doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Having a touch of creative block, so I figured I'd dust off one of my old, introspective snippits and see if I could develop it into something more.
> 
> For fic updates and cupcakes, my tumblr is: townwithoutheart.

***

Your name is Simon Tam. You have two parents, both alive and lost to you. You gave them up to find your sister, River, the only person in the ‘verse who really matters. You used to be a doctor.

When you were a child, barely three and able to hold polite conversation with most adults, River was born. Her first word came six months later, in the form of a sentence. By the age of three, she was correcting your spelling. Your parents loved her, more than they could ever love you, because prestige was important, and your sister was brilliant.

She took them away from you, however unintentionally. You didn’t mind because she loved you, more than your parents ever had.

You remember the way she stuck her tongue out at you whenever you called her a brat. You remember reading to her on demand, not because she was incapable of performing the task on her own, but because she liked the sound of your voice. You remember the games you played, because there was nothing better than pretending no one else in the ‘verse existed. 

You were fourteen when you were accepted into MedSchool. You chose to commute home on weekends, because there was no way you could leave your little sister alone in an empty house of trophies. There was less time for make believe, but you gave up every free minute you had to spend with her. The constant travel took its toll on you. 

You remember the day River ran her nimble fingers across the dark circles under your eyes. You remember the terrible tremble on her lips when she told you about the Academy. You remember feeling as though someone had let you out of a too-small cage, only to shoot you before you even took flight. 

Terrifying and liberating, and you almost cried that night on the shuttle ride back to school. She wrote you letters, said she would. When the letters stopped coming, you knew something was wrong. She never broke a promise to you.

It was worse, the first letter after that dry spell. You knew her better than you knew yourself, and the letters were so very unlike her. You bought a journal that same day, and you tried to find the code. You cursed yourself, knowing it was there, knowing you weren’t smart enough to find it. You still did your schooling, but your mind wasn’t in it. 

When you graduated in the top three percent of your class, you ignored the party your parents planned, spent your night mulling over River’s latest letter instead. You tried to explain to them, when they confronted you. You showed them the letters, you pointed out the bits so obvious even they could understand. There were phrases spoken – _it’s only a game, jeopardizing a promising career, lost without your little sister_ – but they were just–

It is hard to remember a time when the words spoken by your mother and father were anything other than empty.

You started your internship the day you cracked River’s code. The hospital was a prison, her voice echoing in your head – _they’re hurting us, get me out_ – and you could only silence it when your hands were buried in someone else’s guts. Your nights were spent researching, your urgency causing you to make stupid mistakes. You skated that line, knowing that it was more important to get to River out than it was to cover your tracks completely.

Someone had taken your sister from you. Nothing would stop you from getting her back. Not even your father, with his voice like steel, telling you that you were a liability and he would not be there to catch you when you fell.

You don’t bother to correct him. You have always know exactly how much you could get away with, how closely you could skirt the line. Despite his excellence at putting on a good show, he was never there to catch you, not when it really mattered.

It cost you two years of your life and every credit you had. It cost you a career that you loved and a family you didn’t. It cost you a place to call home and a piece of your soul.

You would have paid it twice over, and gladly.

Because you got her out.

You found yourself on a ship, with your little sister in a box – you hadn’t looked closely at which because you needed to leave the planet immediately, and you could afford the rates they asked. You hadn’t covered your tracks because you didn’t have that kind of time. You were on top of the world, because your sister was free.

You were so stupid that thinking back on it actually hurts.

You remember the slow, sinking feeling in your gut when the Captain mentioned dropping off medical supplies to Whitefall on Alliance orders. You actually found yourself hoping you’d booked passage on a ship that was running illegal salvage, rather than one that was under Alliance control.

You remember the tightening in your chest as you stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, steady in the hands of an Alliance agent. All of your work, all of your sacrifice, all slipping away between your fingers, as transient as trying to grasp particles of air.

You remember Kaylee gasping for breath on the floor of the cargo bay. The vow you took what seemed a lifetime before – _first, do not harm_ – it didn’t seem to matter, not when River was in stasis, barely ten feet away. Images flashed through your mind as you stared down at the bullet buried in Kaylee’s gut – the warm smile that welcomed you onto the ship, the blush on her cheeks at dinner, flirting without shame or fear. 

You remember a moment where you hated yourself. Then you thought about River, about what horrors would welcome her back to the Academy, arms wide, and you pushed the hate aside and started to think about Kaylee as a tool instead of a person. A tool that could be used to keep your little sister away from the Alliance, and your face was nearly blank as you dictated your terms to the Captain.

Later, when the Captain asked what a man like you would kill for, you couldn’t deny him. _Oh, God, you used to be a doctor._ But the staggering truth had you reeling, just long enough for the man to push past you. Jayne held you back as the Captain opened River’s cryo-unit. When she screamed and crawled out of her box, no power in the verse could stop you from going to her.

Your sister, River. She was a stranger to you, and the part of you that hoped for a happy ending died. You wanted to cry, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t show these people that weakness. When she whispered your name, eyes wild, you could only hold her. You wrapped your arms around her naked, shivering body. She needed you to be strong.

You didn’t know, then, that it doesn’t matter how strong you pretend to be. Your little sister can see into the splinters of your soul, see the ugly truth hidden there. And she still loves you anyway, just as fiercely as when you were a child.

She doesn’t hold the monopoly on blind love, though, and your willingness to kill for River was tested again, not even a day later. You had never held a gun before. You didn’t pull the trigger, but only because the Captain got there first. It was only by his grace that your hesitation didn’t cost you. You stood there, overcome with horror and anger as the ship took off. Horror at what you might have lost. Anger that you’d frozen when she needed you most.

You’d given up everything to free her. You couldn’t balk. Not now.

When the Captain offered you a place on Serenity, you took it.

You needed time, you see.

You could look at her, at what she had become. She was broken, a thousand reflections of who she had been. Your sister was in there, beyond the animal fear and the tormented riddles. You could still see her. That meant you could fix her.

It was like reading her letters all over again. The solution was there – you were just too stupid to see it. 

Days passed to weeks, weeks to months. In the vast blackness of space, keeping track of the passage of time is an exercise in futility, but you simply couldn’t help yourself. It was your grief, your penance. How many days did the program take to break her? How many will it take you to fix her?

(And why could this have not happened to _you_? River is brilliant, she would have made you better in days, in minutes. You are the idiot child, incapable of caring for the one person who needs you most. Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

You tried. _Gorram_ it all, you _tried_. So hard, to have the answers, to be what she needed. You needed to know what was done to her, so you “moonlighted as a criminal mastermind,” as the preacher put it. You know hospitals, inside and out. It took you two hours to come up with the plan. It took you two weeks to convince yourself it was necessary. 

Morals. Ethics. Integrity. You remember having them, the same way you remember what food that _isn’t_ protein tasted like – distant, fleeting. 

If you wanted something, you worked for it. You _earned_ it. You didn’t steal.

But you could do it for River.

After Ariel, you had the information you needed. You used it as best you could. But you found your mind wandering back to the Core planet. There was no way the Alliance should have caught wind of you. Your plan had been flawless. At first, you blamed yourself. You stood out, saving a man’s life. Of course the doctor would have wondered who you were, would have reported the incident to his supervisor. 

You never suspected Jayne. You never thought he was that _stupid_.

You remember having him on your operating table, alone and unconscious. With the rest of the crew occupied, it would have been an easy thing to inject him with a faulty sedative. A simple overdose – not enough to kill him instantly, just keep him lingering for a bit. It was a nasty shock he had – possible brain damage – and that fall he took – a concussion. Comatose, hooked up to life support until you thought it was safe to finish him off. But you didn’t, couldn’t, because you needed him. To keep River safe, you needed him. He had to trust you. He had to watch the Captain’s back. 

You are capable of so much more, so much worse, than you ever suspected. It is like that day so long ago, when River saw how hard it was for you to commute from MedSchool to your father’s house and took pains to remove herself from the equation before it would have destroyed you. Terrifying, liberating, released unsuspecting to the wild.

You are so focused on fixing, on making better, that you will admit for the longest time, you fail to see the stars in the sky.

It was Kaylee who provided the last link. Tinkering with Serenity’s engine, she smiled at you, and she said, “If somethin’s broke, you don’t need to make it new to make it work, you know?”

And that’s. That’s it.

With the scans of her brain, with the medication you stole – and will steal again – you stabilize her. Nothing else, just that. Stabilize, like Serenity’s thrusters after a particularly rough patch of flying. 

“Simon,” River says. She’s twirling her hair around her finger absently. You remember the gesture from childhood. But she’s not the little sister you remember. She can’t ever be that innocent girl again.

There is no fixing. You didn’t understand that, not at first.

“We can’t go backwards,” she says, “In space, it doesn’t matter. Beginning or end, the direction you face is always forward.”

“Should it worry me that these days, you make perfect sense to me?” you ask, feeling a smile tug at your lips. She’s not the little sister you remember – but it’s all right, because she’s still your littler sister. Even without the Academy, she would have grown up. 

“No,” she replies, an impish grin on her face. “You were somewhere else, but you can hear me now.”

“I’m still somewhere else,” you admit quietly.

“I know,” she laughs. “But you’re someone else, too. It all equates properly. The variables are accounted for.”

She dips her head forward, presses the softest kiss to the corner of your mouth. Then she giggles and spins on the ball of her foot. A twirl, a dip. She is grace incarnate.

Jayne frowns, looks up from polishing his knife, grumbles: “I still say you don’t make no kind of sense, crazy girl.”

River stops to stare at him, intense, and you find yourself doing the same. Jayne goes prey-still, eyes widening, almost comical. It takes perhaps thirty seconds of their combined efforts before he gathers his supplies, sweeping them up in a sloppy armload. He dashes out of the kitchen area like a pack of Reavers is on his tail.

And you? You lean back in your chair and watch your sister dance.

***

FIN


End file.
